Thomas Stearns Eliot was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. Considered one of the 20th century's major poets, he is a central figure in English-language Modernist poetry.
Murder in the Cathedral is a verse drama by T. S. Eliot, first performed in 1935, that portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral during the reign of Henry II in 1170. Eliot drew heavily on the writing of Edward Grim, a clerk who was an eyewitness to the event.
Performance poetry is a broad term, encompassing a variety of styles and genres. In brief, it is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. During the 1980s, the term came into popular usage to describe poetry written or composed for performance rather than print distribution, mostly open to improvisation.
Geoffrey Edward Harvey Grigson was a British poet, writer, editor, critic, exhibition curator, anthologist and naturalist. In the 1930s he was editor of the influential magazine New Verse, and went on to produce 13 collections of his own poetry, as well as compiling numerous anthologies, among many published works on subjects including art, travel and the countryside. Grigson exhibited in the London International Surrealist Exhibition at New Burlington Galleries in 1936, and in 1946 co-founded the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Grigson's autobiography The Crest on the Silver was published in 1950. At various times he was involved in teaching, journalism and broadcasting. Fiercely combative, he made many literary enemies.
Kenneth Goldsmith is an American poet and critic. He is the founding editor of UbuWeb and since 2020 is the ongoing artist-in-residence at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches. He is also a senior editor of PennSound at the University of Pennsylvania. He hosted a weekly radio show at WFMU from 1995 until June 2010. He has published ten books of poetry, notably Fidget (2000), Soliloquy (2001), Day (2003) and his American trilogy, The Weather (2005), Traffic (2007), and Sports (2008). He is the author of three books of essays, Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age (2011), Wasting Time on The Internet (2016), and Duchamp Is My Lawyer: The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of UbuWeb (2020). In 2013, he was appointed the Museum of Modern Art's first poet laureate.
Sonic Arts Network was a UK-based organisation, established in 1979, that aimed to enable both audiences and practitioners to engage with the art of sound through a programme of festivals, events, commissions and education projects. Its honorary patron was Karlheinz Stockhausen.
The Brooklyn Rail is a publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics. The Rail is based in Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, critics, and curators, and reviews of art, music, dance, film, books, and theater.
The Crick Crack Club is a UK-based performance storytelling promoter, founded in 1987. It programs and tours public performances in theaters and art centers nationally, trains and mentors storytellers, undertakes research and advises on the use of oral storytelling in museums and educational settings.
Graham Roos FRSA is a director, producer, writer and performer. His work has appeared in print, on stage, television and radio. In 2011 he was appointed the first Creative Artist in Residence at the University of Buckingham.
National Poetry Day is a British campaign to promote poetry, including public performances. National Poetry Day was founded in 1994 by William Sieghart. It takes place annually in the UK on the first Thursday in October. Since its inception, it has engaged millions of people across the country with live events, classroom activities and broadcasts. National Poetry Day is coordinated by the charity Forward Arts Foundation, whose mission is to celebrate excellence in poetry and increase its audience. Its other projects include the Forward Prizes for Poetry. The day is run in collaboration with partners including Arts Council England, Literature Wales, Poet in the City, Southbank Centre, The Poetry Book Society, The Poetry Society, The Scottish Poetry Library, Poetry By Heart and The Poetry School.
The Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation is a registered charity in the United Kingdom. It was set up in 2011 to take advantage of the gift, in a legacy, of the property at 8 Royal College Street in the London Borough of Camden, the house occupied by the French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine when they lived in London in 1873. In 2014 it was launched as a new arts organisation and a registered charity.
Joanna Margaret Paul was a New Zealand visual artist, poet and film-maker.
Daniel Haberman (1933–1991) was an American poet, translator and graphic designer. Haberman was instrumental in founding the American Poets' Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City and was the Cathedral's first Poet-in-Residence, from 1983 to 1986. In 1988 he and his wife, pianist Barbara Nissman, moved from New York to a farm in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia, where he lived until his death.
Paul Hetherington is an Australian poet and academic, who also worked for 19 years at the National Library of Australia. He is Professor of Writing at the University of Canberra where he heads the university's International Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI) which he co-founded. He is an editor of the international journal Axon: Creative Explorations and co-founder of the International Prose Poetry Project.
Graham Henderson is a cultural entrepreneur based in London. He is best known for developing the arts organisation Poet in the City. In 2014 he launched a second arts organisation, the Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation, committed to cross-arts commissioning and to championing a new funding model for the arts. Henderson has also been involved in many other arts-related initiatives including the development of a public art consultancy, the creation of an international arts network and a campaign to create a new investment fund for the arts.
Máighréad Medbh is an Irish writer and poet.
Laurie Bolger is an English poet, stand-up and presenter based in London. In 2014 she was shortlisted for Young Poet Laureate of London. She currently tours her writing including her debut collection Box Rooms, published by Burning Eye and one woman show Talking to Strangers as well as hosting Bang Said the Gun, "London’s most raucous poetry night". She also runs "creative writing workshops in schools and youth centres most weeks".
Adam Lowe is a writer, performer and publisher from Leeds, UK, though he currently lives in Manchester. He is the UK's LGBT+ History Month Poet Laureate and was Yorkshire's Poet for 2012. He writes poetry, plays and fiction, and he occasionally performs as Beyonce Holes.
Edward Sean Linden is a Scottish poet, literary magazine editor and political activist. From 1969 to 2004, he published and edited the poetry magazine Aquarius, which, according to The Irish Post, made him "one of the leading figures on the international poetry scene". The journal was significant in the growth of British, Irish and international poets, and has been described as Linden's "crowning gift to literature — the nurturing and developing of poetic talent".
Kayo Chingonyi FRSL is a Zambian-British poet and editor who is the author of two poetry collections, Kumukanda and A Blood Condition. He has also published two pamphlets, Some Bright Elegance and The Colour of James Brown’s Scream. He is a writer and presenter for the music and culture podcast Decode. Chingonyi has won the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, Dylan Thomas Prize and Somerset Maugham Award. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.
